


The Tales of Sulahean

by FadeKhat



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Dalish, Dragon Age the Musical, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, Genderqueer, LGBT, Lavellan Backstory, M/M, Multi, Music, Musical, Other, PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Medication, Slow Burn, Trans Lavellan, lavellan - Freeform, non-binary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-10-26 05:10:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadeKhat/pseuds/FadeKhat
Summary: A stream of consciousness Dragon Age fanfic following Sulahean, a wandering elven “bard” who finds themself ensnared in the bloody politics of Fereldan beginning with the 5th Blight. I’ll be writing this alongside a complete replay of the series and posting as I go, so updates will depend on when I get a chance to play. Available with images, music and more on Tumblr.





	1. The Opening Act

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the Tales of Sulahean on Tumblr at https://sulahean.tumblr.com/ to read this story with images, music and a beautiful theme.

I brushed the tips of my fingers against the horsehair strings of my lute, filling what little air was left in the packed room with a simple tunethat matched the tame rhythm of the drummer beside me. It wasn’t exactly my kind of music, but these people were already bracing themselves for a lifetime’s worth of excitement in the days to come, and you can’t deny the mellowing effect of a familiar song on a crowd.

Whispers of “Blight” and “darkspawn” painted the lips of each landless farmer, shopless merchant and tear streaked child who filtered through the tavern doors like blood. They seemed to carry not just their worldly belongings, but the world itself on their backs. Still, I like so think their shoulders sloped a little less when they caught wind of the music in the air. How bad could things really be if the innkeep was still willing to offer a wandering elf a free meal and a place beside the fire in exchange for a spot of entertainment?

Of course, no one really believed that. Not even the innkeeper - but he was in the business of keeping people happy, so he did - sans alcohol. Either he was out, or he knew better than to throw grease on a nervous fire. Fortunately, I had something else to take the edge off. It’s called elfroot for a reason, after all.

There a strange pressure in the air, a near tangible mix of fear, anticipation and genuine disbelief. Most of these men and women, these families, weren’t far enough from home to consider themselves proper refugees, and yet they knew they were, or soon would be. They could have returned home that very night and found Ash Vale or Callow Hill or wherever they came from completely intact, but by the time they had drifted off to sleep in their own bed under their own roof, the Battle of Ostagar would have begun in earnest. And by then there would have been no change of escape, whatever the outcome.

“You can see their fires on the horizon from Ash Vale,” said a woman in a haunted voice, glancing down to ensure the child in her lap was still asleep. “Can’t tell  _ whose  _ fires they are though, King Cailin’s or the darkspawn’s. Most of the village’s decided to dig in, they don’t want to believe what’s happening, but we’re headed to my sister in Winterborne.”

“Maker help those we left behind,” said the stranger across the table.

“Aye, may his light shine on all of us,” the woman said, ducking her head in agreement.

The song’s winding end was met with a dull smattering of applause, as if by impulse. The room’s attention was clearly elsewhere, either down the road where they were headed or back the way they had come, but they did their best to go through the motions of life. That’s something I can understand.

“Should we play another or take our meal now?” Asked the human drummer Tullus from beside the fire.

“One more I think. I’m not sure there will be music where most of us are going,” I said, endeavoring to keep my tone light as I shifted the small lute in my lap.

“Right you are, Sully,” he said, taking a swig of water as I started into the lilting intro of our closing act. I had met the man just the day before, but it doesn’t take much to fall into the rhythm of most tavern songs. Normally I would sing as well, but it hardly seemed appropriate, and I wasn’t up for Chantry hymns.

No sooner had I started in on the opening rift, however, then there was a great crash outside and the room fell into silence. No one took so much as a breathe as it, whatever it was, what we all knew it was, crept along the perimeter of the tavern. The stretch of road outside was unlit save a single lantern that swung back and forth in the wind beside a narrow window, catching in its orange glow a face of living scarecrow made from raw meat and old leather.

The door exploded inward, torn off its hinges and cast into our silent world a twisted, grinning creature the size of a man. Before it could so much as make a sound, my dagger was out of my hand and planted in its skull up to the hilt. One of the luckiest shots of my life, and the line that came after was nearly as good.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt a performance,” I said, deadly charm dripping from my every word like those of a true Orlesian bard. The high lasted for about a minute as the room released its collective breath and the innkeep stepped forward with a broom to check if the thing was still breathing. He never reached the door.

“There’s more,” he said, his eyes growing wide. He and the broom were gone before I could so much as blink, trampled like dust beneath the feet of the horde.

Darkspawn everywhere, through the door and the windows, on the tables and at people’s throats. I was granted a brief reprieve by the mere geography of the room, the creatures simply couldn’t reach the fireplace without tearing through the wall of people, and now bodies, in their path. All allusions of heroism gone, I slung my lute over by shoulder and smashed my remaining dagger through the back window, forcing my way through the web of broken glass and out into the night.

I heard Tullus curse behind me, saw him fall out of the corner of my eye, and stood, paralyzed, as the darkspawn fell on him where I had just been standing. The next moment the tavern was at my back, and I fled into the wild darkness of the Hinterlands, the screams of strangers painting the shadows red.


	2. Exit, Pursued by a Hurlock

Tree trunks emerged like skeletons out of the fog, lurking on the edge of my vision like shades. Every ragged breath was a chance to miss hearing my pursuer, if there was one, and yet I was powerless to resist the basic urge that told me to run, RUN! I let my feet carry me through the grey nothing, pursued by dreams and nightmares toward destinations unknown. For all I knew, I could’ve been running toward Ostagar, straight into the hands of the Darkspawn horde.

The thought alone was enough to stop me in my tracks. I pressed my back against the nearest tree, straining to take in the ominous quiet of the woods. I raised a hand to my mouth to stifle the sound of my breathing and instantly regretted it as the motion twisted the open cuts on my palms and fingers. Gritting my teeth around a hiss of pain, I willed my aura into my hands, summoning a pulse of silvery light that briefly encased my broken flesh and vanished, leaving a web of fresh scars. Nothing to look at now, but they’d heal cleanly enough.

 _Take care of your hands,_ Belavahn used to say back in the Frostback Mountains, and again when we were left to wander the world without a clan. _Your music is our last remaining gift from the Gods._

At moments like this, it always helped to pretend he was beside me, that I was fighting for _our_ survival. It was too painful to think of anyone else, and if I was alone, what was the point?

I looked to my right, and there he was, Dirthamen’s vallaslin glittering beneath his wide brown eyes and tangle of hair, the pale crescent of its peak marking his clay brown skin like a crown, much like my own.

“Walk this road with me brother,” I said, mouthing our shared refrain despite the bitter irony of its use. I, marked for Falon’din beneath my stage makeup, was on a path he might never follow, besieged by the ravens of Fear and Deceit on all sides. The elfroot, which normally numbed my senses and narrowed my view of the world to a single set of strings, mixed with my bitter nostalgia into purest paranoia, and suddenly the woods were screaming around me. Or perhaps the slaughter at the Tavern had simply taken on a new level of brutality.

Either way, I was gone, and with good timing too - no sooner had I pushed off from the tree at my back than a tainted arrow splintered the bark where my chest had been just moments ago.

 _Fight or flight? Fight or flight?_ The conflicting impulses beat against each other like river monsters at war in my bloodstream, one urging me to eliminate the threat while the other pushed me to disappear. Armed as I was with only a single dagger, fear won out, and I pulled my mana tight about me, shooting forward into a Fade step like a bolt from a crossbow.

My magic carried me far enough that by the time I emerged from the Fade, the Darkspawns’ gravely laughter was only an echo in my ears, but the chase wasn’t over yet. Wisps of blue mist trailed behind me, lighting up the path of my retreat and the twisted creatures’ pursuit. I hadn’t caught sight of them before my failed disappearing act, but I judged there were three, perhaps four of them from the footsteps and other worldly shouting that followed close on my heels.

“This way, _sa’ma’lin_ ,” said the Belavahn of my memories, seeing me like no other even as he led me from my death - or, I led me from my death, I suppose.

 _Sa’ma’lin._ Not sister, not brother. Sibling.

The sentiment was of little comfort, unfortunately, as the ground vanished beneath my feet, and Belavahn with it. I hung in free fall for the briefest of moments before the forest floor rose up to meet me and I was thrown down the side of a sheer cliff by the irresistible force of gravity.


	3. As Justice Demands

The undergrowth of the cliffside scraped at my forearms and face like a hundred gnarled fingers, leaving me raw and throbbing with pain some hundred feet from where I’d fallen. My limbs shook with exertion and orbs of light danced before my eyes.

Crawling on my hands and knees, I made every effort to distance myself from where the Darkspawn had last seen me. My lute was kindling on my back, crushed in my initial fall, so I tore it from my shoulders and threw it as far as I could manage in the opposite direction, hoping to throw them off my trail. Then, dragging myself forward just a bit further, I sent myself tumbling down another brambly hillside.

I landed with a jolt that chased the air from my lungs, and struggled forward through an breathless haze of terror until I caught site of a hollow tree rotting away at the roots. Hoping I could count on my atrophied grasp of spellcraft to get me out of a corner, I lunged forward into the damp darkness just as footsteps crashed by overhead.

I took in a grateful gasp of woody air, and immediately released it in a sigh of relief.

Then I heard a startled shout and the sound of a sword erupting from its sheath. Evidently I’d managed to lead the Darkspawn away from my path and directly onto that of another.

_ Fenhedis,  _ I thought.  _ It’s a human. It’s  _ always _ a human. Just go you fool, saving one life won’t right your wrongs. If anything, it will spare another elf down the line. _

I drew my dagger and emerged from the shadows of the woods anyway,  [ charging ](https://juliaokrusko.bandcamp.com/track/merchants-of-war) into the clearing as my reckless sense of justice demanded. The man, brilliantly blonde and definitely human, stood strong behind a targe shield as a trio of smaller Darkspawn snarled and snapped around him. A fourth creature, this one taller than the others, fired a decrepit bow from some distance off.

Every swing of his sword seemed a calculated risk, but no one could take on those odds alone. Thrusting two fingers into my mouth, I split the air with a sharp whistle that drew the creatures’ attention just long enough for him to smash the weakest over the head, dropping it with one blow.

The damnable party split then, and I dove forward to engage the nearest Darkspawn one on one. As comforting as it may be to dismiss the creatures as mindless drones, each swing of its blade was made with brutal efficiency, each maneuver powered not by blind anger but pure, concentrated hate fermented through countless years sealed away in darkness. The thing attacked not out of fear for its own life, but because it wanted to stand on my corpse.

When I plunged my dagger into its chest, the contents of my own heart, the horror of my own atrocities, stared back at me through the unending blackness of its dying eyes. Humankind may hold responsibility for the Blight’s creation as the Chantry says, but the Darkspawn are a reflection of all the world’s people. Of what we can become.

Screams rang in my ears and fire flashed before my eyes, but whether the flames were those that had enveloped the tavern mere minutes ago or those set by my own hand in years past, I couldn’t say. The putrid memory of burning flesh filled my nose as an arrow lodged itself in my right shoulder blade, jolting me back into the present.

I let out a string of curses, but the hazy mix of adrenaline and elfroot that coursed through my veins dulled the pain, and I closed in on the Darkspawn archer with the human warrior close on my heels. 

“I’ve got the back,” I called out, shifting my dagger into my left hand as we flanked the the gnarled beast. With our two blades against its one, we made easy work of the creature. It feel between us, a mess of torn leather and blood, and then I knew fear.

The man’s shield, though small, was edged with red and bore the mark of a sword bathed in the fire of the Maker.

“Templar,” I said, nearly choking on my words.


	4. One Unending Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From now on, I'm going to try to keep a two chapter buffer - so I'll either post once a week on Wednesdays or every time I have three or more chapters ready to go!

I fought the mage’s urge to run, certain he would chase me.

 _He hasn’t seen anything,_ I reminded myself after a desperate review of the past several minutes. _For all he knows, you’re just a rogue. A wandering musician with a dagger. How many mages can fight like that, after all?_

Which is to say, adequately. If he so much as raised his sword, I wouldn’t be long for this world. Fortunately, he seemed to have a rather decent disposition.

“Please, my lady,” the man said, sheathing his sword and removing his bucketlike helmet to reveal the full extent of his shoulder length hair. “I wouldn’t dream of attacking you just for being an elf, you saved my life! I’m Ser Glehn, but please, call me Victor. And you?”

I stared at him blankly for a moment, positively perplexed by his kind manner. Could he really not sense the magic in me? Could templars only detect active interference with the Fade, then?

“I’m Sulahean,” I said haltingly, omitting my clan name as I lowered my dagger. “ _Ser_ Sulahean.”

“Oh! I didn’t realize,” he said, coloring slightly. “Only, I thought you were a woman.”

“Mm,” I said mildly, not committing one way or the other as I gingerly pulled the arrow from my shoulder. A wretched twinge shot down my spine as feeling seeped back into my body and my hand came away stained with blood. I could heal it myself over a day or so if I could only get away from the Templar, but I didn’t like my odds if I ran into another group of Darkspawn alone.

“Could I offer you some of this?” The templar said then, producing a small red vial from somewhere on his person. “I don’t think you’ll need all of it, of course, but I’d hate to see you at a disadvantage.”

I accepted wordlessly, considering him over the top of the glass as I downed a mouthful of the healing potion. He definitely couldn’t tell I was a mage if he wanted us to be on equal footing. Odd. Were all templars this blind, or was he just unusually stupid? He certainly seemed to be taking the Blight well, considering it had been little more than a children’s tale until several days ago.

The sweet infusion of elfroot and dawn lotus washed through my veins like sunlight and, in a matter of moments, I felt the weeping hole in my back sew itself shut. Sighing with relief, I cracked my neck and returned the corked bottle to my new companion. There was still some soreness, but I could put up with a little discomfort in exchange for the unwitting protection of a zealous swordsman.

“Thanks,” I said, kneeling down to loot the Darkspawn corpses. I’d be damned if I was going to wear their stinking armor, but the larger creature’s cured helmet was salvageable and they’d left a series of serviceable daggers to replace the one I’d abandoned at the tavern.

“I assume you won’t be wanting these,” I said, eyeing his superior arms and armor as I sheathed a second dagger on my hip and squashed the cracked helm over my ears. Though his sword and shield were forged from bright steel, he wore only a simple set of leather armor free from any Chantry heraldry. Strange, I had thought all templars wore massive chest plates and chainmail skirts as a mark of their order.

He glanced down at himself, following the direction of my gaze.

“I was, uh, taken by surprise. We were transporting a young mage from Callow Hill and,” he trailed off, his expression somewhat dazed. “It was the middle of the night, I’d just finished my watch… I, I don’t think anyone else made it.”

I swallowed, averting my gaze.

“I’m sorry,” I said, half meaning it. A templar was a templar, after all, but I suppose they were people first. My heart went out to the mage they had driven into this madness, at least. I imagined a young, bright eyed girl with boundless curiosity, bracing herself for her first adventure beyond the quiet bounds of the hamlet she had once called home, only to - _STOP_.

I cast the thought away violently, my hands shaking as I pulled a tight roll of elfroot from the pouch on my belt. I brought the herb reflexively to my lips, and groaned as I realized the full implications of my situation - the only way I could light it was with magic and, right now, that would pretty much kill me.

 _Just imagine, you’ll go down as the first mage in history to be possessed for being too sober,_ I thought, pinching the bridge of my nose and retreating from my anxiety into sarcasm.

“Allow me, ser,” the templar said, producing a set of flint and steel from somewhere on his person. “Maker knows I could use a drink right now.”

With a flick of his wrist, he set the end of my cigarette aflame and I was embraced by the sweet aroma of Sister Sylaise, as I liked to call it. Even before the first pull hit my lungs, the simple ritual of holding the roll of herb in my hand and breathing in brought me peace.

“Thanks be to the Hearthkeeper, whose fire cannot be quenched,” I said dryly, inclining my head to him in gratitude as I inhaled, not bothering to offer him a pull. Humans seemed to think the Maker would strike them down on the spot for touching the stuff in anything but their darkest hour - but what if that hour expanded to consume your entire lifetime? I wasn’t ready to take on the world unfiltered, that much I knew, but Sylaise’s fire mercifully stopped me from contemplating why.

I was adrift in time, a ghost in one unending dream. Or nightmare, as the case may be.


	5. Just Ignore Me

“Our best bet will be Redcliffe, nowhere else has walls strong enough to hold off the horde,” the templar Victor said as we stomped through the forest in what we could only hope was the right direction. We had departed from the clearing as soon as we’d collected ourselves, wanting to put as much distance between us and the Darkspawn corpses as possible. “We’ll know we’re on the right track if we happen upon the river to the west of Chiveley and Southfording but we’ll hit the Imperial Highway and Lake Calenhad eventually.”

“Mm,” I agreed, working away at my herb. Once the frenzy of battle had faded into memory, much of my will to speak went with it. My showy statement back in the tavern had been just as much of a performance as my song. I was still something of a stoic then, though nowhere near as empty as I was when I last saw Belavahn.

“I should think it’s only three or four days to the North by foot,” the man added, pining for conversation.

I let my previous thought float away, making an effort to focus instead on Victor’s words.

“Very good,” I said, my effort to engage falling entirely flat. What else was there to say beyond acknowledging I had heard him? I found it surprisingly difficult to care considering our lives were almost certainly in danger. In truth, I had barely spoken to anyone in years.

Still, he seemed grateful for what little I had to offer.

“So, the marks on your face, your, uh, valasin,” he began, evidently unsure of how to phrase the question politely. “You’re Dalish, yes? What is it, Mythal, Falondin?”

“I, yes. I’m marked for Falon’Din, that is.” I said, thrown off guard by his surprising, if flawed, knowledged of vallaslin. My stage makeup, a requisite for performing in even the most backwater establishment with facial tattoos, had come off during the chase, it seemed. “How do you know that?”

Glehn blushed again, scratching his neck sheepishly, as if he’d just been caught in some petty crime.

“I just like to read, honestly. Not that there’s much else to do around most chantries. Some of them have surprisingly nice libraries depending on how  _ tolerant _ the Reverend Mother is. There seems to be very little written about,” he paused, searching for the right words, “ _ your people,  _ of course, but I found a very nice set of illustrations passing through Colsterworth once.”

He continued on that way for a while, waxing poetic about the various qualities of ink and how important good paper is to the overall integrity of a drawing, as well as asking a number of unexpectedly thoughtful questions about elven culture that I put off with a series of shrugs and monosyllabic responses. Overall, he was quite pleasant. For a templar.

“Are the elven gods gone as well?”

“Yes.”

“Are there many Dalish clans in Ferelden?”

“No.”

“How do you keep in contact?”

“We don’t.”

“But how do you get anything done? The Templar Order would fall apart without any kind of oversight.”

“Mm.”

“Where are you from?”

“Free Marches.”

“Really? How did you end up all the way down here?”

The emotional valence of his question barely registered through the elfroot haze, just as intended. It encased my mind like armor.

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, of course. I shouldn’t pry - I just start talking sometimes and the time disappears,” he said, motioning toward the growing twilight. “My commander always said I should have been a scribe or some kind of academic, which wasn’t really much of a compliment coming from him.”

“I’d say that makes it an even better one,” I said absently, forgetting for a moment who I was talking to. It was probably best not to insult his order. He seemed reasonable so far, but…

“Ha! Yes, I suppose most interests seem outlandish to someone who can’t see beyond the tip of their sword. Funny. Or at least it would be if he hadn’t just… you know. I mean, probably.”

My mouth hung open for a moment as I searched for the words with which to address the passing of a high ranking Templar. I resolved to ignore it.

“Would you mind stopping here for a spell?” I asked, wincing internally at my poor choice of words. “I haven’t slept, and it’s almost light now. We’ll see them coming.”

I trailed off, unused to requesting anyone else’s leave for my actions. When I wanted to stop, I stopped. When I wanted to sleep, I slept. It wasn’t exactly easier, just simple.

“Of course, I was just thinking the same thing. After all, they’re called Darkspawn for a reason, right?”

I blinked, stopping to regard him more fully. Was I hallucinating? Surely my mind was funnier than  _ that. _

“I just mean, it’s light out, and they’re dark,” he said, coloring more brightly with every stumbling phrase. "So, we shouldn’t worry because we definitely  _ would  _ see them. Because they would - you know what? Just ignore me.”

He deflated under my gaze and, surprising even myself, I laughed. Nothing big, just a quiet chuckle before I ducked under a branch and took a seat beneath the tree where I had decided to take my rest.

“I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :3 I know it's kinda slow moving, but I want to explore the different relationship a person might have over their lifetime... So it's gonna be a while!


	6. The Smallest of Deeds

We walked that entire day, stopping only once or twice to rest our feet. We knew we were headed in the right direction, that much was obvious from the trajectory of the sun, but we had yet to encounter either the river or the road. There was, however, a small spring on our path, and it was there we decided to stop for the night.

Glehn all but dove into its shallow waters the moment it came into sight, but I refused to drink a single drop.

“You have no idea what’s in there. It could be poison,” I said, taking a drag of the day’s third stick of elfroot to quench my thirst. It had the opposite effect.

“What? A fountain of poison all the way out here in the Hinterlands? It would be a natural wonder,” he said, washing his face with the crystal clear stuff.

I looked away, rolling my eyes.

“Not poison as in venom. Poison as in pollution. Disease and pestilence. We should boil it first.”

He laughed. It was the bright, beautiful laugh of someone who had no idea what they were talking about.

“You worry too much. Look, it’s coming straight up from the ground. These lands aren’t blighted yet, it’s fine.”

_ You would be surprised, _ I thought.

“Do what you want,” I said.

I left Glehn to gorge himself on liquid pestilence while I collected tinder, sticks and other bits for a fire, distracting myself from the terrible dryness of my mouth by gathering the occasional sprig of my favorite herb for later use. Elfroot is truly nature’s all purpose solution to what ails you.

By the time I’d returned, evening was well and truly upon us. I arranged the wood in a rough pyramid, and Glehn set it ablaze with his trusty flint and steel, once again sparing me the trouble of learning how to light a fire without magic.

It was then I allowed myself to recognize what I had known all along: we had no pot, bowl or even a cup to speak of, and so no way for me to boil water. Repressing a sigh, I laid on my back amongst the dirt and pine needles and resolved to let it pass. I couldn’t be thirsty, or hungry for that matter, if I was asleep.

No sooner had I closed my eyes, however, than Glehn was up, Templar’s helmet in hand, and back by the fire with a helm full of water. Half full, really, considering the open faced design, but still.

Once again, I could only stare.

“Hope you don’t mind a bit of sweat,” he said sheepishly as he propped up the makeshift pot on a stone by the fire. 

“Are you serious?”

“Well, it’s not exactly pestilence, but…”

I stopped listening. I was beginning to think I was losing the ability to discern intention. What kind of person, much less a human, offers up a sacred symbol of their order as cookware for an absolute stranger?

“That’s fine,” I said, cutting him off before his words could overwhelm me entirely. Then, after just slightly too long, “Thank you.”

I stared into the upturned helmet while the water boiled, smoking and thinking about nothing in particular while he kept himself company going on about, I assume, nothing in particular. The crisp crackling of the fire combined with the gentle gurgling of the nearby spring made for an almost absurdly serene backdrop for the end of what had been truly a horrific day.

When the helm looked ready to bubble over, I used my gloved hands to pull it from the fire and drank it while it was still seething hot. My tongue, used to the abuse, felt nothing, and I managed to convince myself that this meant the water was clean.

_ This is acceptable.  _ Another sip.

_ This is safe.  _ A third.

_ You’ve done everything possible to make it that way. You need to drink. _ I finished the lot of it and returned the helmet to Glehn, my thoughts elsewhere.

“I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep,” I said, my sentences becoming increasingly clipped as I sunk into a state of fugue. 

“Very well, if you’re up for it,” he said with a bleary smile.

I settled myself back against a nearby tree, content to spend the night on the ground in the first time in a long time. I had developed a habit for sleeping in trees during my time alone, but I had left my bedroll and rope in the burning tavern along with what little else I’d owned. Figures.

I inhaled the cloyingly sweet scent of elfroot and exhaled my troubles into the night sky, watching the curls of smoke fade into the jewel studded darkness. Beside the fire, Glehn knelt in prayer. I tried not to listen - prayers, whether Chantry or elven, never failed to stir disdain in me now - but I did catch one of the later lines, and it seemed to fit him somehow.

“Though the lands suffer a thousand wrongs,

The Maker yet notices the smallest of deeds.”

The smallest of deeds, like saving a single Templar from the Blight or offering water to a strange elf.


	7. Banalhan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This weeks chapter comes with two watercolors on Tumblr~

I awoke some hours later to a rustling in the woods. Through heavy lids, I saw a flash of corroded armor through the early morning darkness. My stomach dropped out of me and straight through the ground, though I was too groggy to really feel it.

I suppressed a groan. I’d fallen asleep on my watch, and now the darkspawn were going to tear us to pieces because of my body’s deep seated deathwish. I briefly considered letting it happen - I was small, it would be a quick death - but when my eyes fell on the Glehn’s sleeping form I knew I had to fight.

I told him he would be safe, and he would be, gods dammit.

I drew my daggers and stood, rolling my sore shoulder as I scanned the dimly lit forest.

“Hey,” I hissed, prodding the templar with my boot. “Wake. Up.”

The big lug moaned quietly and turned over slightly, tightening his hold on his helmet, which he was currently using as a steel pillow. No wonder he was “taken by surprise” during the attack on his last party.

Wheeling about to give him a good kick in the ribs, I turned to face the darkspawn interlopers just as he began to stir at my feet. I shot forward into striking distance silent as an arrow without any battle cry or declaration to distract me. What I was fighting for was obvious: survival.

The first darkspawn to face me fell easily enough, but every breath seemed to birth another another skull-faced brute into the surrounding forest. By the time the templar had donned his helmet and joined the fray, we were surrounded on all sides, the tree trunks serving as obstacles to our escape rather than cover.

“Maker help us,” Glehn said, his voice dull with horror as the creatures surrounded us, pushing us together until our backs nearly touched over the fire, the flames licking at our heels. “Where are they all coming from?”

“ _ Banalhan _ ,” the place of nothing, I said in the barest of whispers, my words escaping me. It was then, as their arrows flew and their swords made the first of a thousand cuts, that our salvation came in the most unexpected form - a giant boulder thrown our way by the most truly hideous creature I had ever seen. The slab of stone, torn straight from the earth, shattered branches overhead and landed just short of us, scattering the darkspawn in its path.

Against all reason, I grabbed the templar by the wrist and scrambled up over the uneven ground created by the boulder before the darkspawn could regroup. The ogre, it’s bulging muscles painted with some stranger’s blood, charged forward to meet us.

I opened my mouth to call out to Glehn, to demand he get down or around the thing, only to find my words had fled me entirely. Instead, I twisted him ahead of me and - ignoring his cries of distress, as he certainly thought I was positioning him as a human shield - shoved him through the legs of the beast just as it snatched me into the air.

In an instant, the ogre’s wretched face, crowned with a black halo of serpentine horns, consumed my field of vision. I hung there for a moment, powerless to do anything but watch as the hulking horror squeezed my midsection until I thought my eyes would burst and erupted into a bellowing howl that coated my face with blood and spittle.

The creature’s momentus shriek rang so loud and so long in my ears that I ceased hearing it before it was over. All sound condensed into one unending wail as the ogre raised me over its head and pounded me into the ground with the full power of its being, indiscriminately beating me, the darkspawn and anything else in sight until I fell into darkness.

The last face I saw wasn’t Glehn, but Saeris.

_ Ma da’len, mi’durgen, my unending dream. I’ll wait for you in the Beyond. _


	8. The Beyond

I did see Saeris after that, in a way. My dreams were as broken as my shattered body, and punctuated with an inexplicable rise and fall that made it feel as if I were adrift at sea. Through it all, I clung to the image of her sweet shining face.

I saw flashes of red. Red veins. Red skin. Red stone. Dalish armor tinged with gold and a dozen looming vallaslins, each framing a pair of imploring eyes. Pained. Angry. Desperate. In the Fade, I was surrounded all at once by the snowy peaks of the Frostback Mountains, heavenly and aloof; by frozen plains, mesmerising and desolate; by the wooden gates of a far off shemlen city, a safe haven and a condemnation.

Demons of despair and desire, fear and pride, whispered promises so beautiful my eyes filled with hot tears, but I was powerless to accept their offers. The slightest twitch of movement sent echos of pain spiraling throughout my entire body, dragging me out of the Fade and back into my bloody reality. I couldn’t see. I could barely breath. My mouth tasted like festering meat.

I moaned, and someone somewhere made a vaguely comforting sound, but I chose dreaming.

The past was little more than terror and loss now, but in this muddled retelling she was with me through it all. I knelt and held her in my arms, inhaled the scent of smoke and winter berries in her hair, and felt her tiny, perfect hands in mine.

My clan died around me, and I smiled. They were gone, but I knew deep in my heart that Saeris was still with me. She was still of this world.

Xxx

When I finally awoke, it was into a different kind of nightmare. I was so intensely drowsy I could hardly open my eyes, but the harsh resonance of the pounding that assaulted the space, metal on wood, assured me that whatever I was hearing was horribly real. Children, and perhaps a few of their elders, sobbed into their hands to mute their cries and Andrastian devotees recited the chant with fear bidden fervor.

“Maker, though darkness comes upon me,

I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.

I shall endure.

What you have created, no one can tear asunder.”

The penitents’ voices quaked as the building shook around us, but they forged onward for hours as if the prayer were written on their hearts, the last shield between them and the unforgiving shadows of this world.

Xxx

The next I remember, warm light was filtering through stainglass windows, painting the chapel’s stone walls in all shades of red, yellow and blue morning light. The smallfolk who had spent the previous night crouched in terror shuffled about the dusty space as if asleep, doing their best to go through the motions of life. Women in white and red robes tended to the wounds of townspeople turned soldiers, and former merchants distributed bowls of watery stew to the weary survivors.

I sat propped up on an old bedroll by a sack of flour to the right of the altar, a stone carving of Andraste herself looming over me. Glehn snored loudly against the wall beside me. There were deep purple bags under his eyes, and his armor looked just about ready to fall off, but he wasn’t visibly injured, at least.

I couldn’t say the same for myself. Looking down at the bloodstained bandages that peaked out from beneath my sleeves, I tried not to think about how long it would take to heal without magic. The way that ogre had thrown me about, it was a miracle I had survived at all. Looking back, it’s entirely possible the thing had actually used me as a makeshift club. 

__ _ How on earth had we escaped? _

“He carried you on his back for days, you know,” said a young chantry sister, practically swooning as she knelt beside me to change my bandages.

“Oh,” I said flatly, scrambling for words with which to address the lovestruck woman. I had the distinct feeling that, somewhere along the line, I’d hit my head. Hard. “Wh-why?”

“He said he owes you his life, and swore to fight for Redcliffe if we took you in for healing. I think he would have done it anyway, but it was a beautiful gesture. So romantic,” she said, sneaking a peak at the slumbering templar as she finished tending my wounds.

“Mm,” I replied, not knowing how to be with her.

“Did you leave your clan for him? Are you here to step into the light of the Maker?”

I barely choke down a bark of laughter, not for her sake but because my aching ribs couldn’t handle it.

“No, not exactly.”

“Oh, well, give it time. His will finds each of us in our own way, even your kind, sister elf,” she said placing a hand softly on my shoulder and staring awkwardly into my eyes. The presence of my vallaslin seemed to pain her somehow.

Was that her way to saying that she  _ saw me,  _ despite my heathen ways?

_ I’m not your  _ sister. _ Not in that way or the other,  _ I wanted to say, but the sound didn’t come. Instead, I averted my gaze and repressed the urge to shove her away until she flitted off to one of her other patients.


	9. Chantry Folk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you happened to wander in, thanks for reading this far :3

The whole sickly sweet encounter with the Chantry sister left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I was just about to settle into my bodies discomfort, broken bones and all, when Glehn began to stir beside me.

“Chantry folk giving you a hard time?” He said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

I stared back at him, grunting in a way that suggested yes.

“Well, don’t be too hard on them. They did save your life after all,” he said, half in jest.

“S’ true, I suppose,” I said, not knowing how to thank him either. Though if the Beyond meant dreams of Saeris, I’m not sure they deserved thanks for dragging me back from it.

I focused instead on the present. 

“What happened last night? She said you swore to fight for Redcliffe - against  _ what  _ exactly?”

The color drained from Glehn’s face then, the red and gold light from the stained glass painting his face like a tired clown’s. We were all acting in a way - he was playing the brave knight, apparently.

“The past  _ nights _ ,” he corrected me. “We’ve been here three days now, but you were so badly beaten… it seemed best not to wake you.”

He trailed off for a moment, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was about to say.

“Every evening at nightfall, an, an  _ army  _ of the undead comes down from Redcliffe Castle. It’s insanity. The darkspawn are one thing, the Chant speaks of them all the time, but we’ve no idea where these creatures are coming from.”

_ We.  _ He’d been in Redcliffe less than a week, and already he was one of them. 

I snorted in exasperation, leaning back on my sack of flour as the world continued to unravel before my eyes.

“So their leaders are practicing necromancy now? That should be interesting.”

“Hush, wildling,” hissed an older woman huddled not far from us. She wrapped her arms around two wide eyed younglings, as if to shield them from my words. “You’ll scare the children with your whispers of witchcraft.”

I shot her a look, but relented. Even I don’t enjoy scaring children.

“The point is, we have to help them,” Glehn continued, seeming to agree with her. “The Mayor said he wanted to see you when you were well enough. Can you stand?”

“Probably,” I mumbled, humbled slightly by his rebuke.

“Good,” he said, getting to his feet with a slowness that suggested a number of aches and pains on his part too. Shoving his helm down over dirt streaked hair, he extended a large, gloved hand in my direction.

“May I? Uh, need a hand, that is?” He said with a hitch in his voice, clearly uncertain how to extend the rules of chivalry to someone of my indeterminate sort.

I smiled wryly, taking in the moment for all it was worth. The sight of a templar offering me his hand in yet another uninvited act of nobility was almost enough to make this whole ordeal worthwhile.

“Of course good ser, may the Maker shine brightly upon your most noble house,” I said, accepting his hand with exaggerated courtly grace. I’m sure I would’ve relished the look on his face if my knees hadn’t buckled halfway through a most facetious bow. I hugged my arms against my chest as my ribs sang in agony, attempting to hold myself together as a cough wracked my lungs.

It felt like my bones had been pulverized and the shards seeded throughout my body. I remained standing thanks only to Glehn’s arm around my shoulders. After the light headedness passed and the sharp pain receeded into a dull ache, I slipped out from under his arm.

“Are you alright?”

“Absolutely,” I responded dryly, at least in part because I badly needed a sip of water. “And how are you today?”

“You’re unbelieveable,” Glehn said, repressing a bark of laughter in the quiet room. “If you need to sit down, just say so.”

“No,” I said obstinantly, unfolding my aching chest and walking stiffly toward the door. I had little interest in the mayor, but I could hardly heal myself in here.

The midday light that washed over us as Glehn propped open the door was strangely out of place in a world full of darkspawn and the undead. I stood in the doorway a moment, dazed and dazzled, before the smoldering mess that was Redcliffe’s fishing district shifted into focus.

“There always seems to be a fire when these places go to shit,” I muttered under my breath.

One or two of the riverside shacks had burnt to the ground during the preceeding nights, it was true, but the main source of smoke was a large bonfire at the center of the Chantry yard. Only instead of wood, they were burning corpses. Skeletons, really. Anyone with flesh on them, townspeople presumably, were lined up in a tight little row nearby.

Amidst the chaos, they hadn’t quite figured out what to do with their own dead, it would seem.

Glehn sighed behind me, seeming just as put off by the reveal.

“Shall we?” He asked, pressing on with false cheer.

“Why not,” I said.

No sooner had I started down the Chantry steps than the mayor found us. He was a hairy man, and smelled like dog just as you’d expect of a Fereldan, but it was obvious from his posture alone that he was the one holding it all together.

Or watching it all fall apart, as the case may be.

“You, elf,” he called out, throwing up an arm to catch my attention as he trudged toward us. “Glad you’re finally awake. Did you enjoy your nap? Get enough complimentary potions?”

I stared at him flatly, not bothering to arrange my face in any particular expression.

“Right, well,” he continued lamely, clearly more tired than ornery. “You’ve been a great help to us, Ser Glehn, but it’s time for your friend here to pay back his share.”

_ His,  _ I almost said.  _ I’d hate to know what’s happened to my face if I’m being mistaken as a  _ man  _ now. _

But I was silent. Evidently the mayor had been speaking to me, because when I drifted back into the moment he seemed to be repeating himself.

“I said, I need you to talk to the elves. Can you manage that?”

“Sorry, I don’t speak rabbit,” I said before I even realized I my mouth was moving. It was one or the other with me. Mute or moronic.

“You don’t - what? They all speak common. And don’t your kind speak elfish anyway?” He asked, growing increasingly perplexed.

“Once, perhaps, but those days are long gone now,” I said, doubling down with an air of mystic vagueness as I searched my pockets for elfroot. 

“Don’t be an ass, Sulahean,” Glehn said, seeming to sense I was putting one on over the guy, though he didn’t seem to understand why.

_ Ugh. You’re no fun  at all,  _ I thought, sighing as I pulled a crushed stub of sister sylaise from a pouch on my belt. The mayor already looked somewhat defeated, I suppose there was no point in adding to his troubles.

“Fine. What is it you want from them?”

“What from _ them _ ? All we want is for them to come out from behind those walls and fight for Redcliffe like everyone else! Or at least allow some of the women and children to cower in there with them, the lazy kn- sods,” he sputtered, catching himself.

I raised a brow, but let it go.

“Well, walls are meant for cowering. Perhaps you should’ve thought of that before herding them into an alienage,” I said, glancing about the Chantry yard in search of source of fire.

“Will you talk to them or not?” He said shortly, nearly rolling his eyes.

“Yes, yes. What have you offered them?” 

“Nothing. This is their responsibility as much as ours,” he said, affronted.

_ Right. Time to get out of here then. _

“Very well then, I will give it a try,” I said gamely, starting toward the distant alienage gates with nod in Glehn’s direction. “I’ll be seeing you, ser templar.”

In other words, goodbye and good luck to you.

I lit my stick of elfroot with a few swipes over the flaming skeletons as I passed, and let the mayor’s concerns pass from my mind. The fire was spewing all manner of disease, I’m sure, but it could only kill me.


End file.
